If you had a feeling that your iPhone weather alerts have been on overdrive this spring, with all those scary beeps and text warnings popping up with greater frequency than in the past, your intuition is spot on.

The grim reality: We have another threat of thunderstorms firing up in the sky across the Garden State Wednesday afternoon into Thursday morning, and we still have the entire summer storm season to get through. So this year’s number of warnings — 125 as of Tuesday night — will be soaring even higher.

Last year, the Mount Holly office issued 111 severe thunderstorm warnings across its forecast territory. The office does not have a breakdown of how many were activated in the 16 New Jersey counties it covers compared to the counties in its other three states, but the Garden State had a very stormy May and was also hit with fierce thunderstorms in mid-April.

It probably won't be a repeat of last week, with a parade of severe thunderstorms rocking New Jersey. But forecasters say there is a risk of thunderstorms hitting us Wednesday afternoon, Wednesday night and early Thursday. Some of those storms could be severe in the South Jersey region.National Weather Service | Storm Prediction Center

Stormy year in northeastern N.J.

In New Jersey’s other five counties — Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Passaic and Union — there has been a noticeable increase in severe thunderstorm warnings during the first five months of this year compared to the same five months last year, according to Bill Goodman, a meteorologist at the weather service’s New York regional office, which covers northeastern New Jersey.

The New York office issued only four severe thunderstorms warnings in northeastern New Jersey between Jan. 1 and June 3, 2018 and has issued eight so far this year, Goodman said.

The numbers are not unusually high throughout the entire New York office forecast region — which includes the five New Jersey counties, New York City, Long Island, southern Connecticut and the Hudson Valley area of New York state. Goodman said his office has issued just 16 severe thunderstorm warnings across the entire forecast region so far in 2019. In all of last year, it issued 43.

Werner Tedesco photographed this shelf cloud off Cape May Point moments before strong thunderstorms hit on Wednesday, May 29.Courtesy Werner Tedesco

No new procedures

What has caused the big uptick in warnings in the Mount Holly forecast region this year?

Jonathan O’Brien, a meteorologist who works for that office, said the National Weather Service hasn’t changed the standards it uses to issue severe thunderstorm warnings.

Mother Nature has simply been active the past two months, setting up a persistent weather pattern that has been conducive to strong storms developing in the western and central regions of the United States and riding the jet stream to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions, O’Brien said.

Goodman believes a big factor in the stormy weather trend has been the weak El Niño weather pattern, sparked by warm sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Even a weak El Niño, he said, has enough power to influence the flow of the jet stream and generate big clusters of thunderstorms across the nation.

In addition, rising temperatures — which are typical during the month of May — and an increase in wind shear have both contributed to instability in the atmosphere, helping to trigger some of the strong thunderstorms that have swept across New Jersey and New York during recent weeks, Goodman noted.

Workers from the Ebergree Tree Service of Andover clear trees that fell onto a house in Stanhope after a small tornado packing 100 mph winds swept through the area on May 28. Michael Mancuso | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Mobile weather apps

One more thing to consider. The National Weather Service’s emergency wireless alerts get activated only for “extreme weather and hydrologic warnings,” such as flash flood warnings and tornado warnings. Those alerts are automated and are set up by mobile phone carriers, with coordination from the weather service, FEMA and other emergency management agencies.

However, many private weather companies and other weather apps transmit loud beeping alerts not only for flood and tornado warnings, but for severe thunderstorm warnings and also for many types of flood and storm watches.

Some meteorologists say there could be a public perception that there have been far more storms than usual, especially among people who have multiple weather apps on their phones.

By the way, most mobile weather apps have settings that can be adjusted to limit the types of weather alerts that set off the warning beeps.

Uptick in tornado warnings

In addition to all the severe thunderstorm warnings issued this year, the weather service’s Mount Holly office has also activated 20 tornado warnings so far this year, compared to 10 in all of 2018.

Only a handful of the tornado warnings this year and last year have been issued in New Jersey. O’Brien said about 70 percent of them were activated in eastern Pennsylvania and in the Delmarva region of the Mid-Atlantic, and a few tornado warnings covered parts of both New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

In northeastern New Jersey, two tornado warnings have been issued by the New York weather service office this year — both on May 28 during last week’s outbreak of severe storms.

So far in 2019, only one tornado has been confirmed in the Garden State, an EF1 twister that hammered Stanhope and Hopatcong in Sussex County with 100 mph winds on May 28. Although rotating winds were spotted on radar on April 15 and heavy damage was reported in parts of southwestern New Jersey that day, the weather service determined the damage was caused by strong thunderstorm winds and not by a tornado.